Jacob Cordeiro

Article / Updated 10-18-2022

Minecraft is a virtual open world video game where players can dig, mine, build, craft, and enchant things. The game is typically described as a “sandbox game” because players can create their own worlds and experiences where the possibilities are truly limitless. Unlike normal video games, Minecraft allows you to be in control of the game, and it even has options allowing players to act as moderators and build their own coding/modding directly into the game! Getting started Getting started with Minecraft is super easy. First, you need to purchase and install the game. After installation is complete, simply start the game by running the launcher you downloaded from the Minecraft homepage, which also gives you the option to play from your browser. Now it’s time to log in, navigate the main menu, and select your game type. See our guide for beginners below. Logging in and the main menu The launcher opens the News screen, which displays game updates and links. Enter your username and password in the lower right corner and click Log In to continue to the main menu. This list describes what you can do after you click the buttons on the main menu: SinglePlayer: Start or continue a basic game. The remaining portion of this article covers the options for starting a game in SinglePlayer mode. MultiPlayer: Join other players online. Languages: Change the language of the text in Minecraft. Use the tiny button, just left of the Options button, showing a speech bubble containing a globe. Options: Manage game options such as sound, graphics, mouse controls, difficulty levels, and general settings. Quit Game: Close the window, unless you’re in In-Browser mode. Starting your first game in SinglePlayer mode To start your first game in SinglePlayer mode, follow these steps: Click the SinglePlayer button to view a list of all worlds. If you’re just starting out in Minecraft, this list should be empty. Click the Create New World button to start a new game. The Create New World page appears. In the World Name text box, type whatever name you want and click the Create New World button at the bottom of the screen. To turn on cheats, click the More World Options button, and then click the Allow Cheats button to turn cheats on or off. Turning on game cheats increases or decreases the level of difficulty as you play and switches between Creative mode and Adventure mode. Cheats give you more control over the world when you’re just getting started. When you finish creating your world, the game automatically starts by generating the world and placing your avatar (character) in it. Selecting the right game mode in Minecraft Minecraft offers several different game modes that allow you to experience the open world in a unique way. The following types of Minecraft game modes are available: Survival — after randomly being spawned in a new world, players have to try to survive by gathering material, building shelter, gaining experience, and fighting off hostile mobs. Creative — a game mode where players have immediate access to almost all blocks and items, are invulnerable and immune to death, and have the ability to fly. The purpose of this game mode is to create/design unique worlds. Adventure — players interact with objects (levers, buttons) and mobs to complete an adventure. Spectator — invisible to everything and cannot interact with blocks, entities, or your inventory. This mode is typically used to observe other players' created worlds. Hardcore — similar to survival mode, Hardcore is set to the “hard” difficulty level permanently and players cannot respawn; once you die, the map is deleted (or you permanently become a spectator). Your first day in Minecraft When selecting SinglePlayer and Survival mode in Minecraft, your first day can be very exciting but also very stressful. You are immediately thrown into a world with little resources and have to prepare yourself to ensure you survive your first night, when hostile mobs are more likely to attack you. Typically, your first day in Minecraft involves things like collecting resources, punching woods, killing animals, building or finding shelter, gathering food, etc. Now that you know how to play Minecraft, enjoy building and exploring the limitless virtual worlds available to you!

Article / Updated 01-14-2022

Command blocks are useful elements in Minecraft because they have world-bending abilities. You first need to obtain a command block, and then you must program and activate it to be useful to you in the game. Obtaining a command block Command blocks, because of their world-bending abilities, cannot be found in Survival mode. In fact, they don’t even appear on the Block menu in Creative mode. To obtain a command block, you must follow these steps: Create a world that enables cheats. If you start your world in Creative mode, cheats are enabled by default. You can tell whether cheats are enabled by finding your world on the Select World page — the third row of text should contain the word Cheats. Clear out a space in the inventory. Preferably, at least one of the nine bottom inventory slots should be clear. Open the chat menu. You do this by pressing the T key by default. Type/give command_block. If you opened the Chat menu with the Open Command key (which is / by default) rather than the T key, the slash at the beginning is entered automatically. Press Enter. The command block should appear in the inventory. If the bottom row of the inventory was already full, open the full inventory (press E by default) to find the command block. Congratulations — you now have your first command block! Programming and activating a command block You can place the command block like you can place any normal block. By right-clicking on the block (or using a nondefault Use Item button), you open the Set Console Command for Block interface. You can enter a command in the Console Command box. You can access this interface only in Creative mode — if you’re playing on a server, you must have operator status as well. Minecraft has many commands that you can enter in the chat interface, which can do various things, from teleporting the player to manipulating blocks. By entering one of these commands into a command block rather than the chat interface, you can execute the command automatically and remotely by powering the block. A command block is a solid, nontransparent block, so when it’s powered a certain way, it activates everything around it. This can be useful for powering multiple command blocks easily, but it can also mess up the work of inexperienced designers. The simplest way to use a command block is to place a button, lever, or pressure plate on or near the block — this allows you to activate the command block whenever you want. Some players like to take many command blocks and hook them up to redstone circuits.

Article / Updated 10-27-2021

A command block is a Minecraft in-game item that will execute certain commands. These blocks are typically available across multiplayer servers and custom servers, as they are only available in Minecraft worlds that have cheats enabled. As a result, players cannot use command blocks in Survival Mode. Once you have a command block, you will be able to operate it to alter the existing world, change game settings, and even grant players experience points. Remember, command blocks are redstone mechanisms and need to be activated before being used. List of command block commands With a command block, you can apply basic commands in Minecraft with little trouble. Basic commands require only a few words and numbers. Once you understand the different types of commands you have at your disposal, you can modify the world anytime you see fit. The command blocks will support the following basic commands as seen in our list below. Change game mode defaultgamemode <mode> This command specifies the game mode for new players entering the world. For <mode>, you can enter survival, creative, adventure, or spectator, or the numbers 0, 1, 2, or 3, respectively. Set game difficulty difficulty <new difficulty> This sets the difficulty level of the game. For <new difficulty>, you can enter peaceful, easy, normal, or hard, or the numbers 0, 1, 2, or 3, respectively. This strategy works even if the world’s difficulty is locked (preventing players without cheats from changing it), so keep this command block away from the wrong hands. Change game mode for individual player gamemode <mode> <player> This command changes the game mode of the target player. For <mode>, you can enter survival, creative, adventure, or spectator, or the numbers 0, 1, 2, or 3, respectively. Kill target kill <target> This command instantly kills whoever the target is. You can enter a username for <target> to kill a specific player’s avatar or use special arguments. Third-person chat statement me <action> This displays a third-person statement in the chat. If you enter /me is building a house, the chat would say * Isometrus is building a house. The command block’s name is @ by default, making this command produce weird messages, such as * @ says hi. However, you can use the anvil block to rename the command block, allowing it to produce messages like * The Great Command Block says hi. Say message say <message> This is just like the me command, except that it’s formatted more like a normal chat message. When activated, it prints [] . Display seed seed This is the number from which the world is derived — in other words, two worlds with the same seed are created the same way. When this command is run from a command block, the seed of the world is outputted in the Previous Output box of the command block interface. Private message tell <player> <private message …> This command produces a message in chat that only certain players can see. The target receives the message whispers to you: . You can also use msg or w as alternatives to tell. JSON message tellraw <player> <raw json message> This lets you send more intricate text messages to the target player(s). However, the message must be in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format, which can be complicated to use. Fortunately, websites, such as Ezekielelin.com, allow you to produce these messages with a buttons-and-menus interface. Change time time <set|add> <value> This allows you to change the time of day, represented by a number between 0 and 24000. This number constantly increases, but when it reaches 24000, it cycles back to 0 again because a full day and night have passed. This means that the daytime begins at 0 and nighttime begins at 12000. This command lets you manipulate this number. The first parameter can be set or add, which determines whether you’re setting the time to a certain value or adding a number to its current position. is the number in question. Display title title <player> <title|subtitle> <raw json title> This displays a large string of text in the middle of the target player’s screen. The text fades in, lingers, and then fades out. If the second parameter is title, the text is immediately displayed in this way. If the second parameter is subtitle, text is displayed as a subtitle under subsequent titles. The text itself is the final parameter, and it can be either simple text or in JSON format. Display title with settings title <player> times <fadeIn> <stay> <fadeOut> This is a different application for the earlier title command; it defines for the target player some individual settings that modify how titles are displayed. The last three parameters are all numbers representing how long the title should take to appear, how long it should stay, and how long it should take to disappear. The numbers are measured in ticks, or 20ths of a second. Clear or reset title title <player> <clear|reset> This is another application of the earlier title command. If the second parameter is clear, the title displayed to the target player is removed instantly. If the second parameter is reset, all of the player’s title settings (including subtitles) are returned to their defaults. Stop / start rain toggledownfall This command toggles rain. If it’s raining, the rain stops — otherwise, it begins raining. Change weather weather <clear|rain|thunder> [duration in seconds] This changes the weather. You can produce clear weather, rain, or a storm by setting the first parameter to clear, rain, or thunder, respectively. You can also include a number at the end of the command to specify the duration of the weather in seconds. Grant xp xp <amount> <player> This command gives experience points to the target player; is the number of points given. However, you can also write a capital L at the end of this number to grant levels instead of points. For example, xp 100L Isometrus gives the player 100 extra experience levels.

Article / Updated 10-05-2021

Redstone is one of the more advanced concepts in Minecraft. You can obtain redstone dust by mining redstone ore underground. You can spread this dust across the ground as wire, attach it to levers or doors, and craft it into torches and repeaters to build machines. Whether you want a lever that performs two tasks at a time, a combination lock, or a giant virtual computer, you can build it by cleverly arranging redstone dust. Transmitting power with redstone wire Put simply, redstone dust carries power. While holding a lump of redstone dust, right-click the ground to place it there, at which point it becomes a redstone wire. In its default state, the redstone wire is uncharged, which means that it does nothing. When the redstone is powered by a device such as a lever, tripwire, button, or pressure plate, the wire begins to glow red and transmits power to open doors, ignite explosives, or activate dispensers. The following figure shows a pressure plate connected to a mechanism that ignites three explosives at one time. Redstone dust can transmit power and perform more tasks than you can normally complete by pulling a lever. You should know these concepts about redstone dust. It can Orient itself automatically. When you first place some redstone dust, it appears as a small lump of wire that can transmit power in all directions. By placing more dust or certain mechanisms near it, the wire stretches into lines, corners, and bends to meet its task. Extend 15 blocks from the power source. Charged redstone wire gets dimmer as it moves away from its power source. After the wire travels 15 blocks from any power source, it can no longer transmit energy that far. Use mechanisms or items such as redstone repeaters (described below) to extend it farther. Climb blocks. Your designs don't just have to be two-dimensional. Redstone wire can run up or down the side of a single block so that you can build staircases to carry the circuit vertically. However, the redstone still has to have an unbroken path, as shown in the following figure. By carrying power in your world, you can achieve great accomplishments by simply pressing a button. Using other redstone mechanisms Of course, you can craft other items to improve your redstone creations. These allow you to build advanced circuits and accomplish more interesting goals. Redstone torch A redstone torch is a useful resource that's crafted with redstone dust and a stick. It provides a constant source of power to everything next to it, above it, and below it, and it can be placed on floors or walls. It can even power the block directly above it. Redstone torches never burn out on their own, but you can turn them off by powering the blocks they're placed on, as shown in the following figure. Redstone torches are important because they're power sources that can be turned off by other parts of the circuit. Thus, the clever arrangement of redstone torches can allow for powerful circuits such as combination locks or programs. Redstone repeater Redstone repeaters are interesting little mechanisms that can be placed on the ground like redstone wire, though they have a few extra faculties. They Transmit current in only one direction: When you place a repeater, the output faces away from you. A repeater also transmits current after a brief delay. Allow you to add a delay to the circuit: Right-click a repeater to edit the time it takes for the current to pass. Use a delay to make timers and choreograph large circuits. Extend a wire's 15-block range: Then the circuits can move as far as you want. The following figure shows examples of using redstone repeaters. In addition, if you place a redstone repeater so that it powers a second one from the side, it locks the second repeater's On-Off value. Then the circuit can store binary memory, which is useful in advanced designs. Run a redstone repeater into a block to easily make a powered block. You can accomplish a great deal by using circuits, like opening doors, moving blocks with pistons, igniting explosives, playing music. You'll find, as you play Minecraft, that redstone can enhance many circuits.

Article / Updated 09-27-2021

Here are some tips for how you can apply redstone programming in Minecraft — specifically, in Survival mode. Check out these ten ideas for using redstone that you may find particularly useful or interesting. Self-harvesting farms Many farms can be self-harvesting — automated to produce items with little to no input from you. In a game where no resource is permanent, a constant source of items is one of the most permanent ways to make progress in the game. Here are two examples of automatic wheat farms using redstone circuitry. To build these farms, all you have to do is copy these designs. (You can also work them out yourself or find more designs online.) In the first design, be sure to place a redstone torch on the back of the rightmost dispenser. Also be sure to use sticky pistons in both designs. Adjustable implements Sometimes you can use automatic functions to make your manual functions more efficient. For example, if you hook up pistons to the bookcases around your enchanting table, you can improve the table’s enchantments whenever you want, and you can remove the bookcases quickly whenever you just want to give an item a simple enchantment. Dungeon farms If you encounter a dungeon, don’t destroy the mob spawner at its center! This spawner represents an infinite supply of monsters and, consequently, an infinite supply of items. A dungeon farm is a machine, often requiring little to no redstone circuitry, that automatically destroys these mobs and salvages their items for you. You can destroy mobs automatically, if you Make them fall a long distance. Move them near lava. Place them near iron golems. Use a piston to push a block over their heads. Submerge them in water for a long time. To do this, surround the spawner with deep pits, iron golems, tanks of water, or whatever else you need. Draining a mob’s health is fairly intuitive, but if you’re having any trouble, tons of designs are available online to help you out. You can make a mob farm in another way. It’s slower, but you don’t need a dungeon for it. All you have to do is build a giant room with the proper conditions for mobs to spawn. Then you can build the farm around that room, using the same tactics as with a dungeon spawner. Fast transportation Build minecart tracks between your house, your mine, and wherever else you venture. You can use redstone circuitry to automatically load a minecart and change the tracks. You can even send storage minecarts along the track to transport items. Minecarts act like entities, so they can be destroyed by physical damage. If you create a machine that destroys minecarts on arrival, and place a hopper underneath, you can reload your minecart system automatically by turning the minecart into an item and storing it beneath the tracks. Defense mechanisms Defense mechanisms are fun, advanced ways to protect yourself and your home. Raise walls around your base at night, create traps that drop the undead into deep chasms, or automatically place blocks in front of your wooden doors whenever you flip a lever. Items such as daylight detectors and pistons are useful in defending your home with style. You can also use machines to assist you in your nightly ventures. A simple pressure plate surrounded by open doors can trap any mob you lure in, and some well-placed levers can allow you to activate nearby traps if you want to capture certain mobs rather than destroy them. Mechanical lights, walls, bridges, and other elements Though some machines make your Minecraft life easier and more automatic, others can make your home more dynamic — or at least more interesting. Cover dark areas with redstone lamps to use as mechanical lights, create walls with collapse to reveal chests and crafting stations, or make bridges that rise from pools of lava, for example. You can do a lot of interesting things with blocks that receive redstone power. Elevators Elevators can be tricky, requiring you to move the same block up and down over a large distance. Fortunately, simpler versions can move a player vertically with relative ease. One of the simplest techniques is the slime block elevator. Essentially, this device is meant to send the player from the slime blocks below to the platform above. The player can flip the lever to open the ceiling, launch herself through it with the slime blocks, and then close the ceiling again in order to land on the floor above. Handy dispensers Sorting through chests can be a pain, so it’s often helpful to put your most commonly needed items into a dispenser or a dropper. If you stand right next to a dispenser filled with armor, it automatically equips you; similarly, you can use a dropper to hand you your battle gear. Automatic notifications Use daylight sensors, comparators, and other observant devices to tell you exactly what’s going on — for example, what the time is or whether your steak has finished cooking. Redstone lamps and note blocks are useful in this regard. Redstone in battle If you manage to make an enemy out of another player, some of these techniques can be useful. Here are three interesting ways to use redstone against your opponents: A trap based on a block update detector that ignites a cluster of TNT whenever someone opens the door (learn how to use TNT in Minecraft). This is nothing more than a block update detector. A modification on the classic TNT cannon, which fires waves of explosives at the target. Build your own by copying the example and filling all the dispensers with TNT, or look at some of the many designs online. A 12-block-long bridge that lets you build outward without making yourself vulnerable to enemies with ranged attacks. All you need is a piston, a means of powering it, and a bunch of blocks.

Article / Updated 12-17-2020

You can farm a variety of plants in Minecraft, some of which provide food, some that you can trade or sell to make profit, and some that you can use to make important utensils. Understanding all of your plant options is also important when designing a garden! Wheat, carrots, and potatoes Wheat, carrots, and potatoes are relatively simple to farm. Simply follow these steps: Collect seeds and vegetables. Breaking tall grass blocks or tilling grass blocks sometimes provides wheat seeds. You can find carrots and potatoes in villages or by killing zombies. Right-click the farmland to plant seeds, carrots, or potatoes. Tiny, green stems appear on the block. Wait until the crops are fully grown. Wheat is mostly yellow and brown when it's fully grown, and carrots and potatoes are ready to harvest when the heads of the vegetables begin to emerge. Work on other tasks while you wait. You can also use bone meal (crafted from skeleton bones) to grow crops instantly. Break the crop blocks to obtain your profit. Replant seeds, carrots, and potatoes until your farmland is refilled, and keep the remainder as profit. Here's what a thriving farm looks like: Melons and pumpkins Growing large plants such as melons and pumpkins takes quite a bit of work. Follow these steps to start a farm similar to this one: Collect seeds. You can find both melon and pumpkin seeds in treasure chests hidden in abandoned mineshafts. In addition, naturally found pumpkins can be crafted into seeds. Melon seeds can be crafted from melon slices, which you can get by trading with villagers. Right-click the farmland to plant seeds. Unlike wheat, this farmland has to be adjacent to grass or dirt. When these seeds grow into stalks, they tip over and grow melons or pumpkins next to them. To grow lots of melons or pumpkins, till a row of farmland next to a row of dirt, with water pools spaced throughout. Wait. Using bone meal on seeds speeds them into mature stalks, though they don't yet bear fruit. Pumpkins and melons take a while to grow. Ensure that these crops have growing space, and work on other tasks in the meantime. Harvest the crops. Don't break the stalk blocks — instead, break the pumpkin and melon blocks that appear nearby. If you've grown pumpkins, you can craft them into pumpkin seeds to expand your farm. If you've grown melons, breaking the blocks produces melon slices that can be eaten or crafted into seeds. Sugar cane Sugar cane consists of green reeds that grow naturally near bodies of water, and collecting at least one sugar cane block is enough to start a farm, similar to the one shown in the following image. Sugar cane is useful to mass-produce: Paper and items such as bookcases require a lot of reeds to craft, and you can make sugar for items such as cake and potions of swiftness. Growing reeds and cacti Sugar cane is easy to farm: Find (or make) a place that holds water. Reeds grow only near lakes or pools. They can grow only on grass, dirt, or sand. Place canes next to the water in the same way you would place any block. When a patch of reeds is placed where it can grow, it extends vertically until it's three blocks tall. After the sugar cane is fully grown, harvest all but the bottom block. When you break the stalk blocks in the middle, the top section breaks down into items. The reeds at the bottom begin growing again. The essential concept here is to plant a short patch of reeds, let it grow, and then mow it down so that it can grow again. Cacti Cacti are desert plants that can be used for creating traps or making green dye. (Refer to the small cactus farm shown in the preceding figure.) You can typically find cacti in the desert, and you can grow them similarly to sugar cane. However, growing them is unique because they Require no water and must be placed on sand. Cannot be placed next to other blocks. Are sharp, and they destroy items. Cocoa beans Cocoa beans are used to make brown dye and as an ingredient in cookies. The best way to find cocoa beans is to explore a jungle — the beans are found in pods growing off the trees. Though green and yellow pods aren't fully matured, orange ones provide several cocoa beans when you smash them. Farming cocoa beans is easy. To place a pod, right-click some jungle wood while holding cocoa beans. Then break the pod when it turns orange to harvest lots of cocoa beans. Make a large wall of jungle wood to start your farm. Nether wart You can find nether wart growing in special rooms in the nether fortress. You can pick up nether wart by breaking fully grown crops, as shown in the following image. Nether wart is useful for brewing potions. You can farm nether wart by planting it in soul sand blocks and waiting for it to grow, similarly to wheat. (You don't need to till soul sand.) Trees Tree farms are usually useful only when you live in a place with few trees nearby or when you want a wood source while underground. To grow trees, collect saplings — occasionally dropped when breaking leaf blocks — and then right-click to place them on dirt or grass in a well-lit area. (Remember that trees need lots of space to grow.) If you plant a square of four jungle saplings and apply bone meal to one of them, a giant tree grows.

Article / Updated 12-17-2020

In the game Minecraft, mining is an incredibly useful practice that gives you a fast (though challenging) means of obtaining strong minerals such as iron, redstone, and diamond. You can mine in a number of ways, so use whichever method suits you best. Below we will detail four effective methodologies for how to mine quickly and yield the best results: Cave Mining Branch Mining Staircase Mining Quarry Mining These mining tips aren't strict guidelines. Try your own methods, too. Cave mining Cave mining is challenging yet fruitful. To start, you must find a large cave — perhaps while working on another mine or exploring. If you can find a large cave, you have a useful resource at your disposal. Caves are generally very dark — and in Minecraft, darkness means monsters! Always be on your guard, carry weapons (and perhaps armor), and light up the cave with torches: Lighting your way in a cave adventure Cave mining lets you obtain many scattered resources without wearing out your tools trying to plow through stone. However, caves can sometimes be deadly labyrinths, and you may lose your items if your avatar dies. You have to decide whether the payoff in resources is worth the risk of losing them. Cave mining tips When mining in a cave, simply light the way and skim the walls for minerals you can use. Iron ore is common, but keep an eye out for it to collect it, anyway. If you can mine deep enough, you may find useful materials such as redstone, gold, and diamond. However, you may also come across lava — the bane of careless miners. Lava flows slowly and destroys items (and you!), so avoid it and ensure that your precious ores don't fall anywhere near it. Ravines and canyons Sometimes, while exploring or mining, you come across ravines. These narrow, deep gaps can appear underground or on the surface. Although ravines can contain lots of lava and monsters and are cumbersome to navigate, they expose a lot of surface area and are useful for finding minerals. Ravines are great places to find iron and coal. Ravines are usually on the surface, making them easy to spot. However, because they are not deep, you cannot mine some types of valuable material, including diamonds, gold, and redstone. A ravine also provides an excellent shelter because mobs cannot spawn on the walls of the ravine. You need to light the bottom around you using torches. If you enjoy mining and spend most of your time using a pickaxe, build a little rest area underground. You might want to include a bed, chests, and even a farm to provide you with food. Your house doesn’t have to be located on grass. Branch mining If you're new to Minecraft and you don't yet have the weaponry necessary to brave a cavern, branch-mining is an effective way to obtain lots of stone and minerals. Follow these steps to dig a branch mine: Dig your way underground. Dig any way you want, just do not dig straight down; you might fall into a pit, or into lava. At the bottom of every world is a layer of unbreakable bedrock. Ores in Minecraft are most commonly located only a few blocks above this layer, so dig until your character's y-coordinate is 13 or so. (Press F3 to see this value.) Dig a tunnel. The smallest tunnel that your character can fit into is one block wide and two blocks tall. Use torches to light the area, or else your tunnel will attract unwanted guests. Build more tunnels that branch off from the first one. By building extra tunnels that split off from the main route, you can look for ores over a large area. Position the tunnels two blocks apart to be able to inspect a large surface area and not miss anything (see the following figure). Checking a large surface area Branch mining is effective because you can acquire a lot of ores efficiently. However, this type of mining consumes many tools because of the volume of stone you dig through, and produces much more cobblestone than valuables. Branch mining is a helpful method if you have patience, and a project in which you can invest your fortune of cobblestone. Pinwheel branch mining Another form of branch mining is to use a pinwheel mine. Follow these steps: Make a small 4 x 4 area. Use this space as a staircase to get to the surface along with your chests, bed, and furnaces. Make 2 x 2 tunnels in all four directions. This step determines how many branch mines you have, so dig a reasonably big tunnel. Make sure the tunnels are centered with your base. Dig one of the tunnels until your inventory is full. Make tunnels in the “corridors” you created in Step 2. The spacing is up to you, but for maximum efficiency, put them about six spaces apart. If you want to be thorough, put them two spaces apart. It will get all the ores for sure, but you might find that you’ve already collected all the ores from half of the tunnel. Keep digging until only three spaces remain in the inventory. Then head back. Emerald ore can be found only in the Extreme Hills biomes and spawn only 1 ore instead of a vein. Only 3 to 5 emerald ores in one chunk. Emerald ore isn’t the only ore that is found only in a certain biome. Nether quartz ore is found only in the Nether (the “Hell” biome), but unlike emerald ore, nether quartz spawns in veins. Staircase mining In the staircase method, you dig deeply and quickly to search for caves, find a suitable spot for a branch mine, search for minerals en route to destinations, or simply build an attractive staircase. Descend only one block at a time, or else you can't get back up. The following figure shows a staircase, which requires a minimal amount of work. Descending a staircase in a mine You can craft stair blocks (wooden stairs, cobblestone stairs, and others) to make the staircase's ascension less taxing (your character becomes hungry when jumping too many stairs). You can also raise the ceiling of your staircase to make your descent faster and less cramped. Many players build a staircase mine to Level 5 or Level 12 because those are the most diamond-rich levels. At that point, you would build a branch mine. However, you might encounter a cave before you reach those levels. You need to immediately light up the caves and kill the mobs within. Caves are usually the most ore rich, so do not miss the opportunity. Quarry mining A quarry is the simplest type of mining, and digging one is a useful way to gather lots of cobblestone — and to ensure that you don't miss any materials. Simply dig a rectangle out of the ground, and then another one under it, and so on, until you have a sizeable hole from which you've unearthed every possible resource. Build a stairwell or ladder to exit and reenter the quarry. The following figure shows a classic quarry. A classic quarry, with vines for ascending and descending Although quarries produce lots of materials and can be mined safely, digging one requires great patience and generally isn't advisable. However, if you take that route, you can easily repurpose quarries into underground buildings.

Article / Updated 04-24-2017

Though farming is not a required task in Minecraft, having a reliable source of renewable resources is useful. Many different items (plants, mostly) can be farmed in Minecraft. Crops Harvestable items such as wheat, melons, and pumpkins fit the raw definition of Minecraft farming by requiring well-irrigated farmland. Follow these general steps to set up a farm: Find a well-lit area made of grass or dirt. If the area isn't well-lit, craft some torches. A flat workspace makes your task easier, though it isn't mandatory. Craft a gardening hoe and use it. You can right-click the ground to use the hoe to till farmland. Locate a water source nearby and then right-click it while holding a bucket. Right-click again while holding the full bucket to dump the water near your crops. Dig an irrigated hole or canal in your future farm, allowing any nearby farmland to thrive. Dry farmland grows more slowly and wears out after too much time passes without crops being planted on it. Lock up your farm. Jumping on farmland destroys it. Keep crops safe from animals by building walls around the crops. Fences and fence gates work well. After these steps are finished, you're ready to harvest crops! Animals You can use animal farms to acquire resources such as pork or wool without having to endure a lot of hassle. Animals follow you while you're holding wheat, so lure some into a fenced-in area to start your farm. Chickens are lured by seeds instead. Right-clicking two animals of the same species while holding wheat (use seeds for chickens) causes them to spawn a baby animal. Thus, you can make use of your animal farm however you want and keep it populated. A lamb's wool will be the same color as its parents' wool. To farm a specific color of wool, right-click some sheep while holding dye to paint them, and then start a farm with them. Sheep regrow shorn wool by eating grass. Mushrooms Though mushrooms slowly spread if their climate is dark enough, the spacious, dark areas of a farm can attract monsters. If you don't want to have to perfect the lighting, use bone meal on a planted mushroom so that it grows into a giant mushroom, as shown in the following figure. Giant mushrooms provide a huge profit when you break them and can be used to quickly get lots of mushrooms.